Amsterdam Falafel

Last night I got some really great falafel at Amseterdam Falafelshop in Adam’s Morgan. It’s a really cool concept – you get a pita (if you can eat one), filled with 3 or 5 falafel balls, and then they let you go to town on the toppings in a topping bar. With 21 toppings, to be exact.

They also have fries, but they’re not handcut, so I steered away from them. They do fry them in a dedicated fryer. There was actually a woman there who was gluten intolerant who was buying them, and swore to me that she didn’t have a reaction when she ate them, but I followed my new pitfall avoidance plan and just ate my falafel, which turned out to be more than enough food.

6 responses to “Amsterdam Falafel”

Is there a correlation between fries that are not handcut and gluten content? This post and the one before it imply that non-handcut fries are to be avoided. Are you using the term handcut to distunguish fries that are made 100% in house from fries that are produced on an assembly line and may have been contaminated?

Hey Justin – there are two parts of the fry equation for me: the fry itself and the fryer it’s cooked in. I usually avoid any fries that aren’t just plain potatoes that they cut at the restaurant, or can tell me for sure that they are gluten free. Most restaurant fries come from a bag, which sometimes contain flavorings, or are coated in something to give them that nice crisp “shell”.
Then there’s the issue of the fryer being dedicated – so either they just use it to cook fries (as is the case at Amsterdam), or everything that they fry is also gluten free. Having a dedicated fryer isn’t the case at most restaurants, even the ones where the fries are hand cut (that was what happened at Lincoln – the fries were hand-cut, but they were fried with all of the other battered menu items).
So for me: hand-cut fries + dedicated fryer = eat them. Any other equation and I’ll get sick.
You can usually tell the difference between gf fries and non-gf fries because the non-gf fries look puffy, or crispy. The gf fries should look like potatoes.
If you don’t have Celiac’s disease, but just a more minor gluten intolerance, you may not have a reaction to the cross contamination from a fryer, but it’s still there.

Five Guys, Chick fil-A, McDonalds, and all of the fries you cut and fry at home are safe!

Last night I got home from Ro’s birthday, and had my first atmeptt at making an omlette. Apparently trying these things when off your face is not a good idea. It basically came out like scrambled eggs mixed with with tomato and spinach. I still ate it, but it was a right mess.